


The Seasons' Greetings

by carnography (orphan_account)



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 08:42:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3404309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/carnography
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No winter lasts forever. No spring skips its turn. </p><p>(Season 3, Post-Exodus)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Seasons' Greetings

They finished work early—an unexpected but entirely welcome surprise. It seemed like each of their meetings ran late nowadays, all courtesy of the constantly growing burdens of their positions. Since the Exodus and especially since Gaius Baltar’s “miraculous return”, the workload appeared to double by the hour. Like weeds. Troublesome patches springing up between their fingers, undeterred by their constantly supplanting hands.

Now, they’d somehow stolen a moment of peace—so, so rare—and they took advantage of their luck. They enjoyed the silence—pure and undisturbed by tension or pending decision. Quietly, they ate dinner. And they barely spoke a word, but they liked it that way. They needed it that way.

After downing an abrasive _digestif_ , the Admiral planted himself in front of his model schooner and the President plucked a book from his personal collection and settled onto the couch. Galactica’s comforting hum lulled the Admiral’s practical assemblage and the President’s gliding eyes, and made the air sleepy. The soothing sound of air filtration was the closest they could get to one of those evening sonatas, the kind that accompanies distinguished hobbies and red wine and drifts elegantly from one minute to the next.

Laura cleared her throat, and Adama’s eyes (nestled between two masts) darted upwards. She made a sound (almost like a hum, almost like a sigh) as she read.

He grunted in question. Her eyes met his, and she smiled.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized with a dismissive flick of her hand. “I just ... came across a passage I liked.”

His lips curved into a weak smile—weak, but decidedly warm. He set down his paintbrush. “Which one?” Adama asked, leaning back in his chair. It creaked a bit on its hinges, and he folded his hands across his stomach.

“Oh,” she cleared her throat and smirked, wincing a bit—as if embarrassed. She looked down at the red-covered book in her hands and recited, “The seasons long for one another, like men and women, in order that they may be cured of their excesses.” She paused and smiled, “ Spring, if it lingers more than a week beyond its term, begins to hunger for Summer to end its days of perpetual promise … ”

***

Promise.

There was so much promise with New Caprica that she couldn’t help feeling like … an optimist.

Optimism. The colorful swath of the idealist. She’d never worn that particular outfit before. And despite everything, Laura was pleased with the way it fit and how she felt and how they all looked at her. In the mirror, she finally saw something aside from that sad, pale thing with the sad, pale eyes that she wearily recognized as herself.

For now—especially for now—she deserved to wear red and to smile freely and enjoy the sunlight with color on her cheeks. It seemed fair. It seemed right.

She didn’t want to be anything else.

As she walked the halls of Bill’s warship, her steps weren’t those of the President or the prophet. She was just a visitor from the surface, arm intertwined with the Admiral of the fleet—her close, personal friend.

He’d let a lot of his people go since that bleary night on Founder’s Day. She watched more and more soldiers step off those raptors every day. The emptiness of the battlestar was strange. Rarely used passageways were now sectioned off by their orange, auxiliary lighting. None of the constant chatter. No bustling nuggets or pilots out for their afternoon run. It was just them. Just his gravelly voice and the purr of the slumbering ship. They strolled the length of Galactica and enjoyed their usual conversation—seasoned with coy smiles and silly innuendo and careless flirting.

Their usual.

Their unrealized promise.

It all started as harmless fun—sport even. But she’d played so often that she’d developed an ache. Like swimmer’s ear. Like using a muscle so unexercised that she’d accidentally stretched it beyond its capacity.

She knew he felt it too. It simmered just beneath the surface, sparking and popping like some rogue firecracker.

Sooner or later, something would have to be done about it.

They wandered back to his quarters and as their bellies grew warmer and warmer with more and more alcohol, the space between them grew tighter and red hot—humid, almost. It was the end of spring; and yes, they did say there was a heat wave coming.

The Admiral backed her against his bookshelf—the hard frame digging into her back, the smell of aged vellum and leather and moonshine almost making her dizzy. She smiled and her eyes felt dreamy and her nails dug into his scalp, tugging him to her. That lumbering, savannah lion—growling, enveloping her.

A big, sweaty paw slid up her neck and her breath emerged as a shallow, _shallow_ shudder.

“I want you.” Someone (it didn’t matter who) whispered—barely restrained and breathless.

The bridge of her nose grazed his cheek before he cut through the haze and kissed her.

She felt like she was going to melt.

They were right—a sweltering summer was on the horizon, carried day after day by the sultry three o’clock sun.

It was growing so incredibly hot.

***

“Summer, in its turn, begins to sweat for something to quench its heat…”

***

During the first tender days that followed the Exodus, she denied him her body. He could hardly look her in the eye. Her lingering fear. His aggregating guilt. They were issues best dealt with in solitude.

A month passed, and the romance they’d harvested during that year on New Caprica faded into something much more hesitant and delicate. Chaste and reluctant. It was an uneasy and unspoken agreement for a platonic relationship, one they both assumed would be easier. Appropriate. Safe.

They shared dinners and literature, millstones and ambrosia. They learned things about one another that they didn’t even think about during their torrid, secret affair on New Caprica—things they missed. Like that she loved the asters that grew during Leonis Septembers and that her first boyfriend had pensive, hazel eyes. Laura learned that Adama men usually tended toward women with golden hair and golden skin and that he often longed for one of those steaming ciders that were so famous on Aerelon.

Little things. Trivial things. Important things.

It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary when Adama offered his time to the perpetual packing and un-packing of _Colonial One_ — an unfortunate result of Baltar’s botched presidency.

“You look good,” he’d said out of nowhere, careful not to look at her as he packed away Baltar’s wooden camels.

Laura smiled to herself. She couldn’t possibly look “good”—her rich hair was piled in a hasty bun, her oversized dress shirt hung off her limbs. But she thanked him quietly.

Everything between them existed _quietly_ —like dappled sunlight and crisp, October air.

But not always.

Sometimes when they were alone, as they were that evening, their passive agreement trembled like a leaf. Surrendering to the inevitable fall. Behind the boxes, they somehow ended up on their knees and somehow his hands got to her buttons, his mouth warm on her collarbone—her breath thready and needy as he peeled apart her crisply ironed shirt.

She didn’t have golden hair or golden skin. It was red, it was white—and he always told her how much he loved it.

Sometimes, they had Indian Summers.

And afterward, they didn’t speak of them.

But they thought of them often.

***

“And the mellowest of autumns will tire of gentility at last, and ache for a quick sharp frost to kill its fruitfulness …”

***

Laura didn’t help him as he tended to his wounds. She watched from the corner, arms crossed across her breasts as he winced and shivered inside the darkly-lit head.

From the reflection of the mirror, she saw a broken man—a man who likened himself a martyr. And then she saw herself — the icy woman lurking over his shoulder, pale and sad.

It had been a long time since New Caprican summer.

He splashed water over his face, his breathing harsh as he dabbed the bloody mess of his eyebrow. He was obviously in pain. Well, he put himself there.

“I would say ‘I told you so’ but…” Her voice sounded far more biting than she intended. She slid her weight from one foot to the other.

He glanced at her through the mirror. His eyes were on her so briefly that it was barely a gesture of acknowledgment. Her pity for him was absorbed by a shock of anger, humiliation even. It gnawed at her, chilled her to the bone and made her heart hard. His sermon in the boxing ring, pontificated to his slacking deckhands and bloodthirsty pilots…it applied to her too. And he’d made it clear the moment he stumbled from the mat.

Never before had her title—a raspy “Madame President”— knocked her so far off course, like a Godsdamned wind shear.

“We need to stop,” Adama uttered, emerging from his cave with a brooding hunch to his bruised shoulders.

“Obviously,” she said, following him with her eyes as he sunk to the couch and groaned in pain. His pain. Suddenly, she was numb to it.

“It’s …”

“Too distracting?” she suggested. All frost.

Adama looked up at her, tired and beaten. “Dangerous.”

She avoided his eyes, hugging herself tightly as she licked her lower lip. “Well,” Laura began, “I suppose that settles it.”

“Laura-”

She held up her hand and shook her head, turning toward the hatch.

“We have a meeting tomorrow at 0700, Admiral.” Laura turned her back. “I suggest you get some rest.”

***

“Even winter—the hardest season, the most implacable—dreams as February creeps on, dreams of the flame that will presently melt it away,” Laura read on, “Everything tires with time, and starts to seek some opposition, to save it from itself.”

She lifted her head and met his eyes.

He dropped his head and smiled, his hoarse chuckle filling the space left between. “So say we all.”

Laura nodded her head, closed the book and looked into the air—a wistful look to her eye. “So say we all,” she murmured.

Adama rose from his seat, his determined steps carrying him to the couch. He lowered himself beside her, looked at her—really _looked at her_ for the first time in months, and held out his hand for the book.

“I haven’t read this one in a long time,” he said, glancing at the cover. “Too long.”

Laura smiled, and it blossomed over her face—confidently and quietly. The first flower of spring.

“It’s good,” she said.

His smile was shy. “Yes,” he said. “It is good.”


End file.
